Goodbye Milkyway
by Ardvari
Summary: SPOILERS AHEAD! She lay there for what seemed like hours, feeling her life force drain out of her. This must be what a battery felt like…, she thought.


**Disclaimer: **Yeah… no. Not mine.

I apologize in advance for this. I don't know where this came from and what on earth hit me over the head before I wrote this. Anyways, here it is, in all its glorious weirdness:

**Goodbye Milky way**

She woke up with a start, her arms spread to her sides. An excruciating pain shot up her torso as she tried to turn onto her side. _What the…?_ Her mouth was dry and thoughts raced through her head at lightning speed. She tried to get her brain to focus, _focus god damn it_. Whenever she tried to hold on to one of those fleeting thoughts scrambling past her inner eye, a wave of dizziness swept over her, forced her to let go.

Slowly she lifted her head, stared down at herself and let her head fall back onto the pillow. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. This didn't look good, not good at all. In fact, she was sure that this was the point in her life when someone was in the process of blowing out her proverbial candle. She had better grab some coins for that mysterious ferry man.

She lifted her head again, made her brain slow down, she needed to think. How the hell had she gotten herself into this? She was at home, spread across her favorite, now ruined comforter, onto which she was rapidly losing all her blood. Red was _not_ her favorite color right now.

Who had done this to her? She had to let the others know. Evidence and all. Where was that notepad she always, _always_ kept at her bedside? She reached for it, the pain making her wince. No, moving wasn't easy when you were bleeding out.

She finally held the pad between numb fingers, trying hard to hold the pen still. Who was the killer? She thought about that for a moment. Who? Well, she had no clue. She didn't even know what she was doing _here_. Wasn't she supposed to be at work? What time was it? She dimly remembered that this might be Thursday, her day off. She was supposed to meet Grissom for lunch after his shift was over.

Grissom. She had to let Grissom know she was dying. She tried to reach the phone on the nightstand, only to realize that it was gone, along with her cell phone. Instead, her hand knocked a box of Kleenex onto the floor. Great, she was wrecking her own god damn crime scene. Then again, no one could blame her, _really_, for trying to take life- preserving measures upon her ultimate demise. Why the heck was she feeling so poetic?

Her eyes fluttered shut again and she tried hard, oh so hard to stay awake. She forced one eye open, at least one. Something to her right caught her attention. There was something sitting on the nightstand Grissom usually cluttered with whatever he thought he may need during the night. Her head turned around painfully slow and she took in- a miniature of her own bedroom. Great, this was great. She wanted; needed to, in fact, smash the thing to pieces with… something hard. Unfortunately, nothing was lying around and she couldn't have moved if her life depended on it, which it did, kind of. She also didn't want to ruin any potential evidence that could lead to the arrest of her killer. This sucked. Being a crime scene investigator sucked. One couldn't even die with dignity, go out with a bang. What time was it again? And what was she trying to write onto the notepad resting on her heaving chest?

Oh yeah, her killer. What had happened? She remembered eating a strawberry toaster strudel. Possibilities were small to none that the toaster strudel had attacked her; she realized that, thank you very much.

Who else? She really, really couldn't remember and a tear slipped down her face. Now, of all times, when her life had gotten to a point of being almost _normal_, someone decided that she had lived long enough. Someone had decided to snuff her out like some sort of moth getting caught in the bug zapper. Grissom seemed to be rubbing off on her, she realized.

Gosh, she didn't _want_ to die. The fighter in her rose to the surface. She needed to stay awake; she needed to stop the bleeding. Scared and cold, she drew the comforter up over her stomach and pressed it down over the gaping wound. Really, she should have known better. That wouldn't help her; there wasn't anything she could do about the internal bleeding.

She lay there for what seemed like hours, feeling her life force drain out of her_. This must be what a battery felt like…_, she thought. Tears were streaming down her face again as she heard the door open and close, heard running feet, felt someone take her hand. It was probably cold, scaring whoever stood above her. She cracked her eyes open and thought an angel was standing by her bedside.

"God, you're alive!" the angel exclaimed and she imagined heavenly choirs. Then again, she wasn't God. The angel needed to get his facts straight. She didn't even _believe_ in God, for that matter.

"Oh, fuck off." she muttered, wondering if she would go to hell for mouthing off to an angel.

"Wha- what?" The angel seemed thrown by her verbal attack. She decided to take a closer look and realized that the angel's blue eyes looked remarkably familiar. In fact, the entire face rung a bell.

"Grissom! I thought you were an angel!" she said, not able to get her voice above a whisper.

The heavenly choirs she'd imagined turned into the sirens of an ambulance. Shortly after that, a bunch of paramedics (not Hank, thank the deities) were scrambling to keep her alive. They gave her blood, dug through her intestines (at least that was what it felt like) and finally carted her off to Desert Palms.

She succumbed to a peaceful sleep, dreaming of angels making a miniature of heaven. It was weird. Upon opening her eyes, she found herself in a dimly lit room, a blanket wrapped tightly around her. Monitors were beeping close to her head, giving her a migraine. A figure stepped out of the shadows by the far wall and walked over to her side.

"Am I in heaven?" she croaked through chapped lips. The figure chuckled despite himself and shook his head.

"Thank goodness. I couldn't have lived with this annoying beeping for the rest of eternity."

Grissom reached for her hand and pressed a kiss next to the needle they had stuck into the back of her hand. Life- preserving measures.

"Am I going to be okay?" she asked, almost scared to hear the answer. She didn't want to die.

"Yeah, you're going to be fine honey." he said, smiling happily. She smiled back and motioned for the plastic cup of water sitting on the small metal nightstand next to her. He helped her take small sips of water until her throat didn't hurt so much anymore.

"Did you catch the guy?" she asked softly, holding on tightly to his hand. He shook his head regretfully. That darn psychopath had eluded them again. She closed her eyes, unwilling to let go of his hand. Sleep dragged her down into its dark, bottomless pit again and she floated on a cloud of painlessness for a long time until she woke up to the annoying beeping again.

Grissom was gone, stood outside her door and was talking to one of the doctors. She could see him through the glass and waved as he looked at her. Both the doctor and he walked into the room. The doctor told her that she had lost a lot of blood (no kidding) and that her life had hung by a thread. Then he explained the measures they had taken in order to keep her with the living. So far, so good. She was alive and well, was breathing on her own and so hungry she thought she might be able to eat an entire cow. It dawned on her that she was a vegetarian and she settled for some cow- shaped tofu.

She would be okay. Somewhere in the hallway she heard someone talk about a "miracle" that she was still alive. As she scooted over on the small bed to make room for Grissom, who refused to leave her side, she thought she might let him take her to church one day. Maybe the fact that she was still alive warranted a big thank-you to the divine power that had decided to let her stay. She smiled at the thought, whispered a thank-you into Grissom's salt-and-pepper curls and closed her eyes. His arms slipped around her slender waist and they rested together like Romeo and Juliet- without all the Shakespearean drama.

The End.


End file.
